City of Ice (25 page)

Scirye slid off Bayang's back. With her wings still spread, the dragon lay like a sinking sailing ship. If it were not for the heaving of the dragon's sides, Scirye would have thought her friend was dead.

Scirye knelt and brushed the stray snowflakes from Bayang's head. She had never seen any creature as beautiful as the dragon. Even now, the dark green scales, moistened by some melting flakes, gleamed like jewels.

Scirye had felt how Bayang's sides had heaved with the effort, seen the labored strokes of her wings, and guessed at the cost in pain. Leech meant so much to the dragon. Whatever had happened between them in the past was…well…in the past.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Scirye asked.

The dragon just moaned, her warm breath steaming the air as it left her nostrils. Scirye was so worried that she became reckless.

I don't care what it costs me,
Scirye silently said to Nanaia.
Please help my friend. She's suffering so much.

Scirye remembered how Roxanna had pleaded with her to help Upach, because every word had been etched into Scirye's heart. The Kushan girl understood Roxanna's despair when nothing had happened.

Scirye had been unable to aid Upach then. She was unable to aid Bayang now.

“We need Bayang. What's the point of saving us from the hag,” the frustrated girl demanded, “if you're going to let us fail now? Don't you care? Why play these games?”

Scirye listened to the whisper of snow as a breeze blew the light coating away from the glacier's top. She pulled back her glove long enough to look at her palm, but the mark wasn't glowing. There was no sign of acknowledgment.

Scirye was sure some philosopher could come up with reasons why Nanaia came at the oddest times and yet was absent when Scirye really needed her. However, Scirye was like Prince Tarkhun. Deep thoughts were for other people. What she cared about was deeds. And she was now feeling very exasperated with the goddess.

Timidly, the girl stroked a scaled cheek, wondering how dragon nurses comforted their patients.

Kles poked his head out of the coat. “I don't think she can feel that through her armored hide. That gesture is more for you than for her.”

“I have to let her know we care,” Scirye said, and tried a harder slap, hoping that it might be the dragon equivalent of a love pat.

An eyelid fluttered open. “Don't,” the dragon warned in measured tones, “ever do that again if you want to keep your fingers.”

Scirye snatched back the offending hand and hid it behind her back. So much for trying to take care of the crusty old dragon. Bayang's attitude seemed to be recovering faster than her injured body. “Right, sorry. Can I do anything to make you comfortable?”

“Yes, stop babbling,” Bayang murmured. “I'm trying to master the pain. In the meantime, make yourself useful and anchor down that wing somehow before it blows away.”

Scirye noticed how the dragon's jaw worked and the tension lines furrowed her scaled forehead. Bayang was now performing as heroic a mental feat as the physical one she had just performed.

By then, Koko had scrambled off the dragon to join Scirye. “We ought to be getting after my buddy.” He was practically hopping from one paw to the other with anxiety.

Scirye pulled Koko away. “Didn't you see her fighting to get us up here? She understands that, but look at her face. She's in agony and needs to control it first. She wants to rescue Leech as much as you do.”

Koko scratched his jowl. “Yeah, I guess I really knew that. But I'm anxious about my buddy.”

Scirye motioned between herself and Bayang. “He's our friend too.” She noticed a breeze lift one side of the wing. “We can't help him if the wing drifts away. Help me find some rocks.”

It wasn't as easy a task as it sounded, for though the glacier had picked up stones of all sizes, they were wedged tightly into the ice. When the friends located one and began to chip it out of the ice with the axes, they had no idea if it would be too big to move or possibly damage the weaving of the wing. It was simpler to act as their own weights and sit on the wing themselves.

Scirye had left Kles to keep an eye on the dragon while she worked, and the griffin had perched on Bayang's paw as the most convenient sentry post. When she heaved herself up abruptly, he fell off, skidding through the snow.

“Hey!” he said.

“Do I look like a piece of furniture?” Bayang huffed.

“You must be feeling better if you're back to being an old grump,” Koko said.

The lines of pain had not left Bayang's face, though. “You're still hurting,” the girl said, worried that the dragon would drive herself until she was nearly dead.

“I'll have plenty of time to rest after we catch Roland. And anyway, dragons heal a lot faster than humans.” Bayang cautiously furled her wings tight against her back. “At least, Badik is as bad off as I am, so the fight will still be equal.”

Together, the three of them turned the wing around so that it was pointed forward like an arrowhead. “You and I will push, Koko,” she said to the badger. “That means we'll have to time our leaps for the moment when momentum is carrying the wing off the glacier.” Then, at the dragon's direction, Scirye got on, with the girl at the steering loops.

“Just try to keep the nose up,” Badik said. The air began to shimmer around the dragon as she shrank.

The girl nodded and tightened her grip on the straw loops woven into the wing. Kles hovered overhead anxiously, though it was unclear how he could keep her aloft if something went wrong.

The straw wing itself weighed nothing at all, but its size made it awkward to shove. Digging their paws into the snow coating the glacier, Bayang and Koko began to push. The wing began to move forward, slowly at first and then faster, and suddenly its point was tipping over the lip of the glacier.

The frozen ocean looked very close and very hard and Scirye swallowed.

“Jump,” Bayang told Koko, and the two hopped onto the wing as it glided downward.

The sudden addition of weight at the rear made the straw wing buck, and Scirye could hear Koko yelp and scratch at the straw, trying to find a hold. And then she was too busy to think about anything but hauling back on the loops with all her strength, because the nose was heading downward.

Bayang, though, let herself slither forward over the wing, letting gravity carry her to the girl's side. Hind paws dug into the straw to stop Bayang's slide while her forepaws gripped the steering loops as well.

The ocean was perilously close when the nose of the wing finally went up and they were gliding along. Scirye slid back to her usual spot, all too glad to surrender the controls to the dragon.

“Are we dead yet?” Koko asked. He was splayed across the straw with all his claws dug in, and his eyes were shut tight.

Scirye couldn't help feeling exhilarated that their plan had worked. “Where's your sense of fun?”

“Back there with my stomach,” Koko grumbled. He sat up and then, still on his haunches, slid onto the opposite side to balance the wing.

“Kles,” Scirye called to the griffin, “scout ahead of us.”

With a nod, her friend folded in his wings partway and swooped downward at first to pick up speed. His forelegs were tucked against his chest, hind legs stretched out straight behind him and tight against his tail to make as streamlined a silhouette as possible.

Her heart caught as it always did whenever she saw her griffin in action. In full dive, he was the epitome of grace and speed.

A yard above the ocean, he slid his wings out so that his flight path became a curve with him shooting forward. A confident stroke of his wings sent him rocketing on, a small dot against the white expanse.

Leech spat snow from his mouth, but when he tried to breathe he took in more flakes of it. He tried to wipe the snow away, but his arms were pinned to his sides by cold white stuff. He was buried alive.

He fought down the panic. Lying still, he shifted his eyes from side to side. There was a little space around his head, but the slightest movement caused snow to drop on him.

When he had fallen after Badik's blow, the disks must have driven Leech deep into the snow. And as the snowflakes in the air settled, they had lightly covered the tunnel he was in now. That was probably the only reason why he was alive. Roland and Badik hadn't wanted to delay long enough to search for Leech's location.

He could still feel the disks vibrating against the soles of his feet, so he tried to wriggle backward, and though he didn't move more than an inch, he heard the disks' pitch shift lower as they bit into the snow. Little bit by little bit, they started to pull him along the tunnel. Now he knew what it was like for a cork wedged into a bottle.

Suddenly there was no resistance to the disks. They yanked him into the open, past a couple dozen otters who had been trying to dig him out.

He sped upside down over the frozen ocean. Since he had often been head over heels during his practice sessions, he wasn't completely uncomfortable.

Aching all over, he moved his arms experimentally and was relieved to see that they weren't broken. Putting his hands flat against the snow, he shoved himself cautiously upward so that he was squatting. With just as much care, he pulled his legs against his chest and then swung his feet downward so that he was right side up, adjusting for the way his feet bounced up and down during the activity.

Roland and Badik were gone, but they would have left tracks. It was one thing to fight a dragon when you had another dragon at your side and quite another to take one on by yourself. Even injured, Badik had looked very big and very deadly. Besides, Roland had a gun and Leech had…nothing.

He realized he had lost his weapon ring. He didn't feel whole without it. He sped back to the otters. “I've lost a large iron ring.” He held his hands apart to indicate the size. “Could you look into the tunnel?” He pointed at the spot where he'd been embedded in the snow.

Obligingly, one of the otters disappeared down the hole, but he returned a moment later to shake his head.

“I was afraid of that,” Leech said, biting his lip. He wasn't proficient enough to miss the ring as a weapon, but it had been with him since he'd been left at the orphanage. With the flight disks, it was the only link he had back to his past.

His eyes scanned the snow as he began to circle outward in an ever-extending spiral. At the same time, the otters started to search the area as well, but with their short legs they floundered about slowly.

Leech gave a cry of relief when he saw the dark circle lying on the snow.

He executed a loop, picking up speed at the bottom of the circle, and crouched, stretching out his hand to snatch up the ring, and then sped back toward the otters.

“Thank you for your help,” he said. “Will you go back to Uncle Resak and tell him what's happening?”

Bobbing their heads, the otters began to make their way with difficulty back to the opening Roland had made in the ice. As Leech watched them leave, he heard Kles call, “Did you find them?”

Crossing his legs, Leech twisted around. He was relieved to see the griffin speeding toward him. “Yes, but I didn't do a very good job of stopping them.”

“If they were easy to catch, they'd have been in jail a long time ago,” the griffin said, curving around the boy. “You seem to be intact after tangling with Roland and Badik. You're lucky.”

“I know it,” Leech admitted.

Kles pointed his tail behind him. “The others are coming on the straw wing.”

Leech listened hard for his boastful racing partner. “So Naue came?”

“No,” the griffin said. “Bayang almost killed herself flying the straw wing up to the top of the glacier so we could launch it.”

Leech shook his head. “It's hard to believe she could fly with those wounds. She must want to catch Badik a lot.”

Kles somersaulted in exasperation. “She did it for you, you ungrateful little numbskull. I suspect she considers it part of her penance for her past sins.”

“Oh,” Leech said. He tensed, waiting for that inner voice to find something sinister in Bayang's sacrifice, but the voice was silent. Was it as stunned as he felt? “So she really wants to pay me back?”

Kles clacked his beak together. “And more than that. You don't fight like that to get up that cliff just because your conscience is bothering you.”

“What was it then?” Leech asked, puzzled.

Kles darted in so close that Leech flinched. “She loves you like a mother!”

“That's impossible,” Leech blurted out.

Kles spread both paws and wings apart resignedly. “The sad part is that I don't think she realizes it any more than you do.” His eyes regarded the boy compassionately. “But maybe this is what happens when two people who have never been loved before suddenly get together.”

“What do you mean? I've got Koko,” Leech countered.

“Don't fool yourself. Money is a tanuki's only real love,” Kles said, and then gestured with a paw. “But first things first: Roland and Badik are getting farther away. We should try to find their trail so we won't waste any more time when the wing arrives.”

While Kles took the left, Leech took the right, but his mind was only partly on the task. He was thinking over what the griffin had said. Bayang would sacrifice anything for him. But what would she do if she found out he was hearing Lee No Cha? He didn't want to lose her friendship. He musn't let her know about the voice.

After a few minutes he heard the griffin shout, “I found it.”

Leech followed Kles's voice until he could see it himself. Badik's footprints were deep ovals in the snow with grooves at the top that his claws had made. Every now and then between the paw prints was a short trench when he had brought his tail down.

Kles darted back to direct the wing in the right direction while Leech soared upward until the tracks looked like stitch marks on the snow. He glided along, waiting for the others to catch up and keeping an eye out for Roland and his dragon.

“You okay, buddy?” Koko yelled up to Leech. Kles and the wing were following the marks that Badik had left in the snow.

Leech swooped downward, waving his arm. “I've had worse tumbles. Remember when that gang was chasing us over the rooftops and I jumped?”

It was good to see the homely furry face peering up at him. “You would have needed a grasshopper's legs to make it. Lucky you landed on that shed.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Leech insisted as he paralleled the straw wing's course. “It was skill.”

Koko dismissed his words with a skeptical wave of his paw. “Yeah, right.”

“You broke your promise, didn't you, and tried to stop them on your own?” Bayang demanded from the control loops.

The dragon seemed more annoyed than affectionate. Leech wondered if the meddling griffin had misinterpreted everything.

“I thought I could sneak up on them.” Leech hesitated and then added, “Kles told me how hard it was to launch the wing. Thank you for what you did.”

Bayang shot an annoyed glance at the griffin and then looked again at Leech. “Scirye was worried.”

“Me?” the Kushan girl said. “You were just as anxious.”

“Now that Bayang knows he's safe, she can afford to scold him.” Kles laughed.

“I think a certain griffin should keep his little beak shut,” Bayang snapped.

Leech was puzzled and a little hurt as they flew along. Was Kles making up stuff or was he telling the truth?

He needed time to think about everything, but that would have to come later—after they caught Badik and Roland. Leech wouldn't survive if he let himself be distracted by other matters.

“I'll scout ahead,” he said.

“Don't go too far,” Bayang warned. “We should hit them together, not separately.”

After his last encounter with Badik and Roland, Leech could see the wisdom of that strategy. “Okay,” he said, and flew a hundred yards in front.

If they had not been pursuing their enemies, the boy would have enjoyed racing over the frozen ocean with his friends. But they weren't here for pleasure.

He was skimming over the surface so fast that he barely noticed the long yellow strip of paper with the red writing. He circled and came around again, seeing that a lead fisherman's weight had been tied to it so it would stay in one spot.

He angled lower so that he was only inches above the snow and slowed to pick it up. The words looked like Chinese but not the modern words he'd seen in Chinatown. These looked like pictures and above them was a caricature of some demon.

What was it? Had Roland left some insult?

Compared to the guns and monsters, this seemed harmless, so Leech brought it back to the wing. “Look what I found,” he said, holding it up.

“Throw it away,” Bayang and Kles shouted at the same time.

“But it might be a clue if you can read it,” Leech protested.

Bayang jabbed a claw at it. “It's a magical charm.”

“Get rid of it,” Kles added, waving his paws frantically.

Balling the paper up, Leech flung it away.

And not a moment too soon.

The paper burst with a bang and a cloud of smoke as fluffy as a cotton ball. But instead of dissipating, the smoke began to spin with a hissing noise until it was a globe. The air was filled with a howling noise as the sphere flattened suddenly into an oval.

Fierce winds began to tug Leech this way and that.

“Get away if you can!” Bayang ordered as the straw wing tilted crazily.

As Leech twisted around in the air, the snow rose in streamers like a tangled skein of white yarn to engulf him.

And then the boy was tumbling about in a howling world of white.